Ombudsman program serves as watchdog in nursing facilities

Sylvia Taylor-Stein, executive director of Long Term Care Services of Ventura County Inc., leads a volunteer training session for the Ventura County Ombudsman Program recently in Ventura. The volunteers help the elderly residents of nursing homes and long-term-care homes.

Sylvia Taylor-Stein's notes are magnified during volunteer training for the Ventura County Ombudsman Program recently.

The Ventura County Ombudsman Program currently is training volunteers to help the elderly in nursing and long-term-care homes.

To become an ombudsman, volunteers need to complete a week of training and commit for at least two years.

"We do a lot of educating," said Sylvia Taylor-Stein, executive director of Long Term Care Services of Ventura County Inc., a watchdog agency that runs the ombudsman program. "They're training to be advocates."

The main goals are to empower the elderly, raise concerns that residents of nursing and care homes might have, and improve their quality of life, she said. The group has a special focus on nursing homes because residents there require 24-hour care.

"We want to get to know them, become their family and become their trusted confidant," Taylor-Stein said.

The ombudsman program conducts three unscheduled visits to facilities per week.

The program is training 10 volunteers and has others who have served as ombudsmen for years.

"One has been here for 21 years," Taylor-Stein said.

After the volunteers complete the training, they go into the field with a mentor before being on their own. They check the condition and living environment of nursing homes, among other things.

The emphasis is on patients with no relatives, because they don't have anyone else who can check on their safety and rights at care homes.

During recent training, Taylor-Stein and Kathy Terry, the group's field services coordinator, staged a true-story scenario for the volunteers. Terry played a 90-year-old woman living in a nursing home, and Taylor-Stein played a young male staff member trying to seduce her because he wanted her money. Taylor-Stein said an ombudsman would talk to the resident and help open her eyes about the situation.

Complaints they receive often allege violations of residents' rights, low staffing levels in the facilities, physical or verbal abuse, and financial wrongdoing.

Donna Dodds, a volunteer in training from Oxnard who was a caregiver for her mother, said that when her mother was at a hospital, a doctor ordered physical restraints because she didn't want to stay in bed. Dodds said she now feels guilty about it and wishes she had known that restraints cannot be used simply for convenience.

Other volunteers said they were motivated to serve as ombudsmen because they have had relatives at nursing homes and realize the importance of having watchdogs there.